It looks like some issues may arise if/when an instance’s domain name changes. Is there any way we can change federation so that we don’t need to rely on such a central point of failure?
Yes, domain names can be replaced with cryptographic identifiers: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md
How interesting. Isn’t the
did:system also what AT Protocol (Bluesky) uses? 👀That’s correct.
did:prefix is used to denote cryptographic identifiers, in theory one could even take adid:plcidentifier from Bluesky and then use it as identity for an ActivityPub application:DIDs aren’t unique to Bluesky
Didn’t mean it was. Just mentioned it as it was the most common example I knew. But thanks for the link! Reading it now.
Thanks. This is a little complicated to wrap my head around. Is this already implemented and we just have to toggle it, or is this something that needs a special/unreleased version of lemmy in order to activate?
I doubt that it will be implemented in Lemmy, the application architecture needs to be different in order to support cryptographic identities.
But there are other implementations (they are listed near the end of the document).
Are instances changing names that often? Hexbear is the only one I have heard of and iirc that was only temporary.
Irc solved this by having list servers domains that give a list of irc servers so instead of having random servers that go down you have a network of distributed servers that work together.
Hypothetically an instance could federate an activity telling all other instances about it’s new domain name.
But once we get post, community and user migration working there will be much less need for it - everyone could just move themselves.
I still don’t understand how this is not akin to falsifying data. If we normalize servers copying data from other instances and just rewriting the URL, there is little in the way for malicious actors to create piefed instances to scam others pretending to be someone they are not.
